Saoirse's Crossing

By Jan Fortune

Saoirse grows up hearing the extraordinary stories of family members who died before her birth or in early childhood. Her aunt Miriam, who believed she had lived across a thousand years to be with her lover in each generation, the Moorish Princess Casilda. Her grandmother, Daireann. more than a healer and wise woman, and her father, Oisín, an alchemist and magician. But who is Saoirse?

I was Casilda's mother more than a thousand years ago, she tells her mother, Sarah.

Tucked away under a mountain in Roscommon in Oisín's family home, Saoirse meets Faolán, a local boy lost in their garden maze. As they play out stories from myth, Faolán's loyalty and love grows, but Saoirse craves adventure and is not easily won.

As their paths diverge, one momentous event threatens everything, leading Saoirse into a maze from which she might never emerge and taking Faolán on a quest on which their lives depend.

Spanning back into the mists of pre-history; travelling from Roscommon to Paris, Prague to Brittany, Budapest to Nice, Zaragoza to Tromsø, and bringing together Celtic mythology from Ireland and Brittany, Saoirse's Crossing asks questions of identity as contemporary as they are ancient, exploring the lengths we will go to for love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cinnamon Press
• Release date: Feb 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781911540168

Jan Fortune

Jan Fortune is a writer, mentor, yoga nidrā teacher and herbalist living in a forest in Finistère. She has a doctorate in feminist theology and is the founding editor of Cinnamon Press. Jan has taught writing courses across Europe. Her previous publications include creative non-fiction on the alchemy of writing, poetry collections and novels, most recently At world’s end begin and Saoirse’s Crossing. Jan writes at the intersection of story, poetry, herbalism and alchemy. You can follow her on Substack (https://substack.com/@janelisabeth) and she blogs and runs the writing community, ‘Kith: for a different story’ (https://janfortune.com/).

Book preview

Prologue

Alchemist’s Daughter, Alchemist’s Mother

You know the story as well as me.

Once there was a Moorish princess, Casilda. She was the daughter of Alamun, the king of Toledo, and a Berber girl who died in childbirth. She had long golden hair, green eyes, pale skin. She wore only white or the palest blue, almost white, like the halo of sky around the sun. Her brother, Ahmed, filled their father’s dungeons with captive Christian knights, but Casilda hated to think of their suffering and each night she visited them, taking them food, and learnt their stories.

Casilda was often sick, haemorrhaging for long periods, and one of the stories she heard was about a healing well in the Christian kingdom of Burgos, beside a remote cave near Briviesca.

One day Ahmed brought home a man who was allegedly the Prince of Zaragoza, but he may not have been who he seemed. Perhaps Ben Haddaj was a vizier or an advisor. He was a Muslim ally, but the religion of his ancestors was elsewhere and he was in love with Casilda.

There was an incident so slight, so small, that no-one except Casilda and Ben Haddaj knew exactly what had taken place. Perhaps he had given her an amulet. Perhaps he offered words from the faith that was calling her. But in offering healing and recognising her belief, he sacrificed his chance of being with her in that life. It was a tiny act that united them for centuries and yet it overturned their worlds.

Ben Haddaj left Spain to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to find the faith of his ancestors. He never returned but was lost in a shipwreck, calling to Casilda and to his God—Shir hama-alos… Out of the depths I call to You, O Lord…—Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might…

Casilda left Toledo to seek healing. She was baptised in the castle at Burgos but refused to take either servants or provisions as she travelled into the countryside beyond Briviesca and towards Salinillas de Bureba, up into the caves in the hills. She insisted that her longtime nursemaid, who had mothered her since she was born, return to Toledo and went on alone.

At the well of San Vicente, she was healed and became a healer herself, and a hermit, eventually proclaimed a saint. Some of the stories say she lived to be over a hundred. Others say she died young. All the stories say she was loved by the local people and even by the mountain lions.

A thousand years later, in a small town in north-east England a girl called Miriam told her friend, Cassie, Once there was a Moorish princess, Casilda, daughter of the king of Toledo and a Berber girl who died in childbirth. She had long golden hair, green eyes, pale skin. She wore only white or the palest blue, almost white, like the halo of sky around the sun.

Cassie’s thick plaits were fair, not golden, her eyes grey. These were signs of enchantment, Miriam insisted. Cassie saw only the story that Miriam told her; belief was her gift.

I’m your Ben Haddaj, Miriam would say. I’m supposed to save you, my enchanted girl.

It was a story that a lonely girl told to a friend. It was a story that unravelled after an incident so slight, so small, that no-one except Cassie and Miriam understood how it had spun them apart, a tiny betrayal that overturned their world.

This is the end of the story, Cassie thought.

So she stopped calling herself Cassie and took back her whole name, Catherine, and went on with life. She put away Miriam’s story that once she had been a Moorish princess, Casilda. That once Miriam had been the elusive Ben Haddaj who had loved her through a thousand years and many incarnations.

Later, Catherine lost a baby before he was born and afterwards her marriage failed, but she found love again and became a writer.

But in Budapest, Catherine began to have strange dreams. In the dreams she was not herself. She was Selene Virág, a young woman imprisoned after the Hungarian Uprising. On the wall, a list of dates was chalked with a chipping of crumbled stone, the last one—Friday 6 November 1959. She huddled into Selene’s threadbare blanket and fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming of another day in Selene’s life—

Catherine became obsessed with discovering more about Selene and what had become of her and, as she did so, Selene began to dream the life Catherine was living in November 1993. And, as the two become increasingly entangled, Catherine, who was supposed to be in Budapest to write a book about the poet Attila József, discovered that Selene believed József was the father of her daughter, Miriam, despite the fact that the child was born eighteen years after József had killed himself.

So Catherine’s life changed again. Was Selene another incarnation of Casilda? Is that why they were dreaming one another’s lives? And József? Was he another incarnation of Ben Haddaj? And what about Simon, Catherine’s new partner, could he also be Ben Haddaj?

By this time, Miriam wsn’t around to claim that she had once been Ben Haddaj.

You see, your Aunt Miriam had died four years earlier.

What I can tell you is that Selene was real and she was also a relative of ours. Her mother, Marie, was my great-aunt and Selene was my mam’s cousin. Your bubbeh named your Aunt Miriam after her lost cousin’s little girl.

Later, Catherine called her little girl Miriam too. Perhaps she is the next incarnation of Casilda. Perhaps she has found her own Ben Haddaj and…

Sarah smiles. You’ve fallen asleep, she whispers, standing to leave her daughter’s bedside.

No I haven’t. I heard the whole story. Saoirse yawns and snuggles deeper beneath the blankets. If your sister was Ben Haddaj, who were you?

Oh, I think I’m just me. Miriam wasn’t like other people.

And who am I?

Sarah strokes her daughter’s head. The same questions each time she retells the story. I don’t know, my love. Perhaps you are brand new.

No, I think I’m very old, older than Casilda. Saoirse sits up straight. I was Casilda’s mother more than a thousand years ago. The first Casilda, not the one in our story.

Really? Sarah looks flustered. Well, perhaps you were. But now you need to sleep.

Daddy was a magician and an alchemist, Saoirse adds. He was an old soul too, but I wish he could have stayed with us longer.

So do I, love. So do I. Now go to sleep or we’ll never know what the morning will bring.

But Saoirse is already asleep and Sarah tiptoes to the living room, where the peat is still smouldering in the fire. She sits for a long time, thinking about her sister, Miriam, and her husband, Oisín, who both died so young.

Part 1:

The Maze

Saoirse

They were the first people I spoke to after I died or, at least, the first that heard me speak to them.

I’d sat at the back of the bookshop, feeling disoriented and hungry. I had a yearning for cake, but tried not to think about it. It was probably the shock, I told myself. I tried to concentrate on the reading instead—the story of an eleventh century princess turned mystic and hermit, who’d lived with a lion called Beatriz and died young. A healer and an alchemist of the soul. I knew Casilda from my mother’s bedtime stories, but was fascinated to learn about Beatriz.

Afterwards, I bought a copy of the book and queued to have it signed, surprised that the author knew how to pronounce my name when I spelled it out: SAOIRSE.

Sursha, she said.

I knew who she and her partner were, of course. The writer was Miriam McManus, the daughter of my Aunt Miriam’s closest friend, Catherine, and named for my aunt. The other was Casilda, apparently a distant relative of mine, a third cousin perhaps. Our great-grandmothers had been sisters, Marie and Hélène. Her grandmother had married a Hungarian she’d met at Art School in Paris and they’d gone back to Budapest to escape the Nazi occupation. A disastrous move. Her husband died in a forced labour camp while Marie and her daughter, Selene, almost starved during the War. Later, Selene took part in the ’56 Uprising and was imprisoned. Marie, broken and desperate, was tricked into signing a fake death certificate for Selene’s little girl, another Miriam, with the promise that they would be given new papers to get out of Hungary. What she didn’t know was that if Selene was no longer a mother her sentence of execution would no longer be commuted to imprisonment. Marie got away and brought Miriam up in Nice until her 18th birthday, but when Miriam learnt the part her grandmother had played in her mother’s execution she ran away to Spain, where Casilda was born.

I took Miriam McManus and Casilda to a café and bought coffees and pastries.

I’ve a terrible sweet tooth, I said, grinning and handing out plates of sugar-glazed almond and apple confections. I couldn’t resist these. It was true, but only recently. I’d never cared about sweet things when I was alive.

I decided to tell them I’d found the little silver amulet in a shop in Budapest, which was also true, but not in a way I could explain. Perhaps I underestimated their capacity for belief, but I was uncertain of how to make sense of what had just happened to me, so I told them about being in Budapest a year earlier.

That’s when the dreams started… I told them. This part was true, I thought, feeling uneasy. And I had this idea, I went on.

I smiled at my third cousin, who looked, if not quite my mirror image, certainly very like me, we might be taken for sisters.

Your mam left home before your gran had chance to pass on the hand of Miriam that belonged to her mother, I continued, so it got passed on to our branch of the family instead, to my gran. But then it got lost and… I stopped suddenly, noticing that Miriam was wearing a damascene hamsa, exactly like the missing one I’d seen in photos and heard about so often. Oh, it’s… I peered more closely at the hamsa Miriam was wearing. Is that…?

Miriam nodded. It’s a long story, but at some point your Aunt Miriam gave it to my mother, Catherine, and…

Gran never said. Did she know?

Yes, but not at first. My mother offered to return it to your gran, but Judith wanted her to keep it.

Because it always finds its way back to the true incarnation of Santa Casilda?

Miriam and Casilda glanced at each other.

Yes, Casilda said. And, confusingly, it’s Miriam who is Casilda… the original one that is… I just happen to have the name because my mother was fascinated by the story when she moved to Spain.

I nodded. My mam told me the story over and over, how Aunt Miriam was convinced that Cassie, your mam Catherine, had once been Santa Casilda and that Aunt Miriam had been a prince the love with her, Ben Haddaj.

Anyway, while I was in Budapest I had this strong feeling I should do something about the missing hamsa, but I had no idea what. Then one day I was in the Orthodox Synagogue, which is exquisite by the way, and they have this little shop and I found this.

I rummaged through my copious bag, thinking about what had actually happened—how I’d returned to Budapest so suddenly after what had happened at Samhain. I’d been thinking about the hamsa since the first visit. The ones in the Orthodox Synagogue weren’t damascene, but they were beautiful and… I pulled the tiny box from the bag—

It’s not Toledan damascene and I realise your grandmother would have worshipped at the Great Synagogue rather than the Orthodox, but it’s from somewhere she’d have known and it’s so lovely. I just had this idea that I should bring it for you, even though I didn’t know how I’d find you.

I handed the box to Casilda, who sat straight, breathing hard. Thank you, she whispered.

Inside the box was a tiny silver hamsa with fine filigree fingers and a bright blue and red opal at its centre. On the back, a Star of David was stamped into the silver.

It’s exquisite, Casilda said, unclasping the chain to put it on.

Beautiful, Miriam added.

We wept and Casilda told me about her mother dying and how Miri had pulled her through the terrible depression afterwards. They hugged me and made me promise to keep in touch.

I didn’t mention that I’d died in Budapest and wasn’t sure how long I might have in this world.

I thought about the young man in the shop, who’d been telling me where the pendants were made and how some used fragments of broken plates more than a hundred years old.

Remnants, I’d said.

He smiled, but then I noticed his pupils dilate and the colour drained from his face. I heard my own voice, a long way off, say ‘Oh’ before I crumpled to the floor.

When I opened my eyes the room was the same, yet not the same.

A young man was showing a tiny hand of Miriam to a small, fair-haired woman. He looked like the young man of a moment ago, yet there was something different…

This one has a Star of David stamped on the back and an opal where the eye would be, he was saying.

It’s lovely, the pale young woman agreed, but I always wear this one.

She fingered a damascene hamsa and I realised that I knew her, though we’d never met. Buy the silver one for your daughter’s lover, I said, but Catherine didn’t seem to hear me.

Perhaps for your child, the young man said.

Catherine startled at that and put a protective hand on her belly.

I didn’t think it showed.

A hunch, he said, smiling.

This one belonged to a friend, Catherine went on, indicating the hand at her throat. She was called Miriam. My partner’s Jewish too, though he… She trailed away, began again. I feel superstitious about buying something for an unborn child, she said.

She was quiet and the young man waited, dark eyes looking past her. He didn’t seem to see me.

I lost a baby before this one, Catherine added.

I could see why my Aunt Miriam had loved her—Catherine, who might once have been a hermit and saint, an alchemist of the soul… There was something guileless about her.

You will lose this baby too, I said softly, but there will be another, you will have your own Miriam.

She bought the silver hamsa and lost it immediately, though she didn’t notice me take it. Soon Simon would join her and she would lose her unborn son and forget about the pendant, but I had it safely, to deliver to her daughter, twenty-five years and seconds away.

I ate cake with Miriam and Casilda, thinking about the body I’d left on the floor of the tiny shop of the Orthodox Synagogue and how, now that I was dead, I realised I had never felt so physical, so hungry, so alive.

Faolán

The cries were coming from the maze. Saoirse stood at the entrance at the side of the cricket pavilion, listening. A boy. But there was no boy at the nearest house, a bungalow half a mile down the track, nor at the two houses a mile beyond that. Jim lived alone and Pat and Norah’s children were long grown-up. Perhaps they had a grandson visiting, Saoirse thought. Perhaps Pat was in there with him, trimming the thick yew and hawthorn hedges of the maze. But the cries didn’t sound like play.

They were becoming more urgent.

Saoirse smiled and entered the maze. In the stories it’s always the girl being saved, she thought. This was better.

She paused by the next bend in the dark green, yellow-tipped yew, to listen to where the cries were coming from and turned right, shaking her head. It was at least twenty minutes before